


By Chance, It's Destiny

by nightberrypearl



Category: NU'EST
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, First Kiss, First Meetings, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Strangers to Lovers, Whipped!Jonghyun, for a change, i mean it i'm serious there's no angst this time, zero angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-25 00:10:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17714324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightberrypearl/pseuds/nightberrypearl
Summary: The first time that they met, the first time Jonghyun was in Minhyun's apartment, Jonghyun was barely awake and almost falling asleep while Minhyun was sat in his pyjamas.The second time was the work of fate.The third time Jonghyun found himself in Minhyun's room.The fourth time was the start of something beautiful.





	By Chance, It's Destiny

**Author's Note:**

> That is an awful summary, but I had no idea how to summarise this fic.

The first time that they met, Jonghyun was barely awake and almost falling asleep while Minhyun was sat in his pyjamas.

It had been a long day for Jonghyun. He had had 2 straight hours of a lectures for a module he didn’t really like, followed by a tutorial where he felt like he understood nothing of what was being discussed. Then, to make matters worse, when he was all to ready to go home and just grab a quick snack before going to collapse on his bed for the next twelve hours, he returned to his apartment building only to discover that the lift in the building was out of order.

Jonghyun lived on the 6th floor. That was 12 flights of stairs, or 84 individual steps, up to his floor. He really couldn’t be bothered. The moment he saw the bright yellow caution tape strapped across the metal doors of the lift, he had half a mind to just sit on the stairs and take a nap there while the lift got fixed, because _surely_ it wouldn’t take longer than a few hours to fix. Right?

But alas, after calling up site maintenance staff, he was told that they had no idea when they would be able to get someone in to fix it.

Begrudgingly, Jonghyun decided just to take the stairs. Six floors had never felt like so high up before in his life. Jonghyun wasn’t exactly unfit – he was a regular visitor of the gym – but in his current state, he could barely keep himself awake enough to not trip and fall back down the stairs. His eyes were practically drooping with exhaustion with every step that he took.

After some indefinite time of trudging mindlessly up the monotonous stairwell, he figured he should be at his floor by now, and so left at the next landing and pushed open the apartment door before him.

His flatmates had a nasty habit of not locking their front door, claiming that they didn’t need to since the front of a building had a secure lock anyway. Jonghyun had long given up trying to argue, but they had a point, besides individual rooms had locks anyway, so any thief could only really get into their kitchen if anything.

So, he wasn’t really surprised when the front door just opened without a key – it was what he was used to.

Despite his sleepy daze, his stomach still grumbled quietly, it had been a few too many hours since he last ate, and so he continued to walk sluggishly down the long corridor to the kitchen at the end.

Shoving open the door with his body, he was confronted with a couple of things.

First, the kitchen was far cleaner than he had been anticipating. Pretty much all of his flatmates were not known for keeping their communal space clean. Crumbs, unwashed dishes, and random spillages of mysterious sauces on the counter tops were a regular occurrence, so it was quite the shock to him that the counter top before him was perfectly spotless.

Secondly, as he stepped further into the kitchen, he turned the corner to find a perfect stranger with widened, upturned, eyes staring at him while blinking owlishly. The other man was sat at the breakfast bar with a bowl of steaming hot ramen in front of him. He seemed to still be in pyjamas or some sort of loungewear and his brown hair was sticking up at odd angles here and there on the top of his head. Perhaps he had just rolled out of bed from a good lie in.

“Um… hello?” The stranger called out to Jonghyun, who was still stood in the doorway, now fully awake and staring back uncomprehendingly at the stranger.

“Err…” Jonghyun said rather coherently. Then it dawned on him, he was in the wrong apartment. This wasn’t his apartment.

The stranger chuckled and smiled at him amusedly.

“No, it’s not.” He said.

Jonghyun hadn’t realised that he had his epiphany aloud for the other man to hear.

“I…Er… sorry, I’ll just…” Then Jonghyun gestured vaguely to the door before almost running out of there in embarrassment.

He heard a deep chuckle following him out of the kitchen and the apartment that wasn’t his. Once he was out of the stranger’s apartment, he looked at the floor number, only to see that he was on the 5th floor – and of course he hadn’t realised until he got to the kitchen that he was in the wrong place, all the floors looked the same and all the apartments were based on the same template.

Not wanting to stay on that floor any longer, he ran up the stairs to the correct floor, burst open his own apartment door (which he made sure to check was really his apartment) and went directly into his room to flop onto his bed and wallow in his embarrassment.

He let out a loud groan into his pillow as he tried to erase the past 5 minutes from his memory. To his dismay, he couldn’t. The memory of walking into the wrong flat and interrupting a stranger eating his ramen would forever be burned into his brain.

* * *

 

Jonghyun didn’t see the stranger again until a couple weeks later, which was surprising considering that they lived in one small building that had only one lift.

It wasn’t like Jonghyun expected, nor particularly wanted, to see the man again. After all, they didn’t meet in the most normal of circumstances and after that, he was fairly certain that the other man probably thought he was dumb or weird.

But fate worked in mysterious ways, and so two weeks later, Jonghyun found himself downstairs again, in the stranger’s apartment, for pre-drinks that the rest of his flatmates had managed to coerce him into going to. He had only agreed to be dragged out to pre-drinks and had been resolute in his decision of not following them out to the club afterwards.

Jonghyun wasn’t big on going out, or partying – he usually just preferred to stay in his room with his games whenever everyone else went out to get blackout drunk. The whole idea of going to a club to dance and get sweaty with strangers just didn’t really appeal to him. Goodness knows how his flatmates managed to drag him out to just pre-drinks – even if it was just downstairs.

When they arrived, there were already quite several people lounging around on the sofas or stood around the breakfast bar with drinks in hand. No doubt that the drinks they held were some awful mixture that tasted like death and designed to get the drinkers as drunk as possible as quickly as possible – in other words: probably some soju mixers with _very_ bad ratios (if not just straight up shots).

Jonghyun had just grabbed an unopened bottle of beer from the table when someone suddenly appeared beside him.

“Oh, hello again.”

It was the man from before. Instead of his loungewear from the last time they met, he was wearing a loose-fitting black checked shirt over a black t-shirt and some ripped jeans. His hair was styled neatly with a slightly off-centred parting, the front few locks of hair flopping neatly over his forehead and eyebrows. Jonghyun had thought before that the man was good looking, but now, Jonghyun could see that just “good looking” was a severe understatement. Unworldly handsome was probably more fitting of a descriptor.

“H-hi.” Jonghyun managed to greet in return, with his slight stutter just about masked by all the rest of the noise in the room.

“Fancy seeing you here again.” He said with a smile and a hint of teasing in his tone.

Jonghyun didn’t really know how to respond, his brain no longer functioning properly. Instead he opted to take a swig of his drink to occupy himself.

“You seem much more awake than the last time I saw you, so I’m guessing I can assume that you actually intended to be here, and that this isn’t another accident?”

The question managed to kick Jonghyun’s dazed mind back into gear.

“Ha, oh, yeah. Sorry again about last time,” he apologised, “I was so tired I really just didn’t notice I was on the wrong floor.” He looked away slightly bashfully, his explanation sounding ridiculous even to his own ears.

The sudden sound of laughter made him turn back to the other man who was grinning at him.

“I pretty much realised that, you looked dead on your feet that day. I do hope you managed to get some rest after that.” Minhyun replied, sounding mildly concerned at the end.

“Aha yeah, I did. Thanks.” Jonghyun replied somewhat awkwardly, something about this other man just made all his already meagre social skills fly right out of the window.

“Good, I’m glad.”

The bright eyesmile that the other man flashed at him then was almost enough to make Jonghyun swoon or choke on his drink. Thank goodness the universe had _some_ mercy on him, and he didn’t do either of those things.

It was at that moment then that someone else came over to pull the other away for a moment, presumably this was the stranger’s friend.

“I never got your name by the way.” The other man called out to him as his friend began dragging him away.

“It’s Jonghyun, and yours?”

“Nice to meet you Jonghyun, I’m Minhyun.” Minhyun told him with yet another beaming smile. “I’ll see you around!” Minhyun barely managed to call out before his friend pulled him away to speak to him. The two of them had a short and hushed private conversation before they separated. Jonghyun had just turned away for a moment to see if his flatmates had gotten themselves into any trouble yet, but when he turned back, Minhyun was gone.

Minhyun didn’t reappear for the rest of the night. Jonghyun stayed for at least another hour after Minhyun had gone, drinking some more beer and making sure his flatmates didn’t die before they even went out for the night, and for the whole hour, his eyes kept flicking back to the kitchen door, hoping that Minhyun would reappear. But he never did.

* * *

 

 Surprisingly, Jonghyun saw Minhyun again a few days, rather than weeks, later. In an uncharacteristic bout of forgetfulness, he had forgotten his keys which had his fob to unlock the front door of his apartment building. He was stood at the front door, buzzing his flat’s intercom to see if any of his flatmates were in to unlock the door for him when Minhyun suddenly appeared behind him and reached around him and unlocked the door with a quick swipe of his fob.

Jonghyun almost jumped at Minhyun’s sudden appearance and when he turned around, Minhyun – handsome and perfect as ever – was stood holding the door open for him, gesturing him in first.

“Thanks.” Jonghyun said gratefully, ducking his head in the hopes of hiding any potential blush that might be on his face.

The warmth of the building was more than welcoming and let out an involuntary sigh of relieve as the heated air hit him. He had been standing in the Autumn chill for perhaps a bit too long waiting for someone to unlock the door for him. To make matters worse, he was only dressed in a thin hoodie over some sweats – originally, he had only been planning to do a quick trip to the convenience store down the road and hadn’t anticipated having to stand in the cold for a good few minutes.

“You’re welcome.” Minhyun responded brightly. “We all have times when we forget out keys.”

“Sadly…” Jonghyun huffed, slightly irritated at himself.

“Are you able to get into your apartment if you haven’t got your keys?” Minhyun asked as he pressed the button to call for the lift.

“I should be able to, our front door is usually unlocked.” Or at least, Jonghyun hoped he would be able to get into the apartment. For once, he was thankful for their horrible habit of not locking the door.

“Well, if you do find yourself locked out of your flat, you’re free to come down to sit around in mine while you wait.” Minhyun offered.

Jonghyun considered the offer and was almost tempted to fake being locked out just so he could take him up on it.

“I mean, maybe you have somewhere else you could camp out, I don’t know, it’s just an offer because we’re close, you know? Well, not ‘close’ as in the two of us are close like, emotionally close as friends or something – although I do want to get to know you and be friends and stuff – but I meant as in physically close, since I’m just under you—Wait no, that sounds weird, I just mean that I _live_ below you—"

Minhyun’s seemingly unending ramble startled a laugh out of Jonghyun as the other kept talking and talking and backtracking then talking some more. Listening to Minhyun flounder was just too funny that Jonghyun couldn’t help but laugh aloud.

“I get what you meant.” Jonghyun said finally after his laughter died down. “And thanks for the offer, hopefully I won’t need to take you up on it, but it’s appreciated anyway.” He added as they stepped into the lift that had just arrived.

Jonghyun’s words were seemingly effective at calming Minhyun down from his mild state of panic as his body visibly relaxed.

“And I would like to get to know you too.” Jonghyun added tentatively as a response to what Minhyun said amidst his rambling.

Minhyun whipped round to face him with a look of shock mixed with glee.

“Really?” He questioned with a hint of hope.

Jonghyun laughed again at the way Minhyun was behaving like an excited puppy – Jonghyun could practically see his tail wagging.

“Yes, really.”

Whatever Minhyun was about to say next was interrupted by the doors to the lift sliding open at Minhyun’s floor.

Minhyun seemed to frown at the doors for a moment before the furrow in his brow smoothed back out again.

“Well, I guess this is me then.” Minhyun said with a sigh as he stepped out. “I’ll see you again another time?”

Jonghyun felt a shy smile worm it’s way onto his face at the blatantly hopeful way Minhyun looked at him.

“Yeah, I’ll see you around, Minhyun.” He replied with certainty before the doors to the lift slide shut again and Jonghyun continued up to his floor.

\\\\\

‘Another time’ turned out to just be a few minutes later, after Jonghyun arrived at his flat to find that in his bad luck, whichever one of his flatmates had just left had suddenly decided that they were going to lock the door, leaving Jonghyun trapped and locked out until someone returned to unlock the front door.

So, barely a minute after they had parted, Jonghyun was stood back downstairs, at the front door to Minhyun’s apartment. He knew the door was unlocked, it had opened slightly when he had knocked on the door, but it didn’t feel right just walking in. Minhyun appeared out of his room moments after he knocked, his face lighting up when he saw Jonghyun at the door.

“Locked out?” he asked with a mock solemn expression.

“Apparently so.” Jonghyun replied wryly.

“Well then aren’t you lucky that you know me?” Minhyun joked with an air of false arrogance.

 “I feel absolutely blessed.” Jonghyun deadpanned in return before they both broke out into shy smiles as they just stood in Minhyun’s hallway staring at each other.

“So…”

“So…?” Jonghyun repeated back.

“Well, we can just chill in the kitchen with the uncomfortably lumpy sofas and cold plastic chairs, or if you don’t mind we can just sit around in my room which has more comfortable seating options?” Minhyun offered, showing clear bias as to which option he would rather prefer.

“Hmmm…” Jonghyun pretended to think of the options for a moment. All the sofas in their student accommodation was the same, so he knew how awful they were. The cushions were barely cushion-y enough that you could feel the wooden framework of the sofa itself when you sat down.

“Tough choice, but I’ll pass on the sofas I think.”

“Good choice.” Minhyun said as he pushed open the door to his room. Minhyun’s room was the one closest to the door, on the right side of the hallway – the one directly below Jonghyun’s own room he noted.

“Just sit anywhere – bed, chair, floor, wherever – just make yourself comfortable.” Minhyun told him as he let Jonghyun walk in first.

The layout of Minhyun’s room was exactly the same as Jonghyun’s. There was a double bed pushed against the left wall, a wardrobe and a desk to the right and another door that led to an ensuite bathroom. Just another typical room for the building in which they lived.

Jonghyun figured that since he was the guest, he would let Minhyun take the chair, so he went and sat on Minhyun’s perfectly made bed, leaning himself back against the wall for support. To his surprise, Minhyun didn’t take the chair, but instead plonked himself next to Jonghyun on the bed – both of them sitting with their legs spread in front of them.

“Do you have any work you need to do?” Jonghyun asked, eying the tall stack of books and the laptop open at a word document on Minhyun’s desk. “I don’t want to be a disturbance.”

“Oh no, you’re not a disturbance.” Minhyun rushed to assure him, “I don’t have anything pressing to do that can’t be done later, and it wouldn’t be very good of me to invite you over just to watch me work.”

A traitorous part of Jonghyun’s mind said that he probably wouldn’t mind just watching Minhyun work. He probably wouldn’t mind watching Minhyun do literally nothing, but he wasn’t about to say that aloud. But he sensed that no matter what he said, he would not be able to persuade Minhyun that he didn’t need entertaining if he was busy with coursework.

“Well… if you’re sure...”

“Good, because I am.” Minhyun chirped back brightly, “Besides, last time we saw each other, we didn’t get much of an opportunity to talk.”

“Well, you sort of just disappeared.” Jonghyun couldn’t help but retort, perhaps a little bitterly but he hoped Minhyun didn’t pick up on it.

“Ah yeah… sorry about that.” Minhyun apologised as his hand came up to rub at the back of his own neck awkwardly. “One of my flatmates started drinking really early that night and got too drunk to stand, and since I don’t drink, I was on care duty.”

“Damn, that sucks.”

“A little.” Minhyun shrugged, “There are better things that I would have rather been doing that watch someone throw up periodically over the space of an hour.”

“Such as?” The question was out before Jonghyun really had a chance to think over whether or not it would be appropriate to ask.

But it seemed to be fine, since Jonghyun could see the corners of Minhyun’s lips quirk upwards as he leant back against the wall, tilting his head up to stare at the ceiling. Jonghyun’s mouth ran dry as he watched the way Minhyun’s prominent Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as the other prepared to speak. The universe really was too kind to Minhyun and it was giving Jonghyun a hard time. It just wasn’t fair how every little thing Minhyun did set Jonghyun’s heart racing.

“Well, there was this one guy that I had met, and I would have much preferred to stick around for the rest of the night talking to him than taking care of my friend, that’s for sure.” Minhyun then turned to him with a smile that was a mix of shy, but also somewhat cheeky.

Jonghyun stared back at Minhyun before he realised a little slowly that the other had been talking about him.

“Oh.”

Jonghyun found himself averting his gaze away from Minhyun’s intense one, turning his head down to look at his hands as he fiddled with the hems of his sleeves.

“It was a real shame when I got pulled away mid-conversation.” Minhyun added as Jonghyun began feeling increasingly warm.

“Sometimes…” Minhyun then began, softer this time, “Sometimes, I wonder if he felt the same, if he wanted to talk to me just as much as I wanted to stay to talk to him.”

“Yeah,” Jonghyun replied, equally softly, “I think he did.”

“You think so?” Minhyun said hopefully.

Jonghyun turned back to face him and could see the happiness blatantly evident on Minhyun’s features.

“Yeah I think so.”

His response made Minhyun’s smile widen until it was almost blinding to look at but Jonghyun couldn’t find it in himself to look away.

“Great! That’s wonderful, maybe later I’ll try and find him again.” Minhyun exclaimed suddenly, breaking Jonghyun out of his stupor to flounder at what Minhyun just said.

Hadn’t he been talking about Jonghyun himself?

After a few moments of utter confusion, Minhyun laughed suddenly – loudly and unrestrained, throwing his whole body into the laugh – which only served to make Jonghyun even more confused.

“You…” Minhyun wheezed out, “You should have seen your face.”

When it hit Jonghyun what just happened, his immediate response was to hit Minhyun playfully on the shoulder for messing with him.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh.” He said as he began to calm down. “I shouldn’t have made that joke, sorry. Of course, I meant you.”

Jonghyun remained unamused and a little miffed.

“Well, way to ruin the moment.” Jonghyun muttered under his breath. Unfortunately he was still loud enough that Minhyun could hear due to the way they were sat in close proximity.

“I’m sorry,” Minhyun repeated even more apologetically, “forgive me?”

Jonghyun figured that you must have to be some cold, emotionless, robot to be able to resist the pleading eyes and the slight pout on Minhyun’s face at that moment, and being subject to it so suddenly without warning, Jonghyun’s defences crumbled and gave way instantly.

“O-okay.”

Though it wasn’t like he wasn’t going to forgive him anyway, in his defence.

“I did mean it though. What I said before, I mean, about wanting to talk to you more.” Minhyun clarified. “You seem like an interesting person.”

‘Interesting’ wasn’t usually a word that people associated with Jonghyun. More often that not, he was described more as the opposite, which never came as a surprise to him since he didn’t do things that people generally thought of as ‘interesting’. He played games alone in his room when others went out partying; he preferred to spend time alone or away from crowds where others revelled in attention. Neither of these things that he did were considered interesting by most people’s standards, and yet here was Minhyun sitting before him telling him that he seemed interesting. He supposed part of that could be down to the fact Minhyun didn’t really know anything about him, but he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“I-I meant it too.” Jonghyun replied, forcing himself to meet Minhyun’s gaze when he did.

It was worth the effort when Minhyun’s face lit up, and Jonghyun hadn’t known before that someone could look so completely happy as Minhyun did at that moment.

“I’m glad.”

* * *

 

 

After the time that Jonghyun sought refuge in Minhyun’s room whilst waiting for a flatmate to return and unlock his door for him, they began seeing a lot more of each other.

During the two whole hours while Jonghyun was locked out of his flat and in Minhyun’s room, the two of them did nothing but just talk to each other, getting to know each other properly as they had both wanted to.

They started with the basics of where they were from, what they studied and all that normal stuff you ask a person you just met, before moving on to delve deeper into each other’s personalities, interests, and hobbies. Conversation flowed incredibly smoothly, and to Jonghyun, it was almost unbelievable how easy it was to talk to Minhyun. Jonghyun wasn’t an anti-social person, he was just quiet and shy. He had trouble holding conversations sometimes with new people and just didn’t know what to do with himself, or what he should say. But that wasn’t the case with Minhyun.

Usually, Jonghyun feared rambling too much, talking too much about things that would bore the other person or not talking enough and effectively killing the conversation. But Minhyun seemed to be interested in everything Jonghyun had to say; he paid him his full attention and proved that he did by asking meaningful and engaging questions, effectively making Jonghyun open up more. Then when Jonghyun paused and momentarily ran out of things to say, Minhyun instantly chimed in with his own thoughts, taking over the conversation and keeping it going until Jonghyun was able to jump right back in.

Jonghyun felt like he had never had a more perfect conversational partner.

Their two hours flew by and before they had even realised time had passed, Jonghyun had received a message from his flatmate that they were back and had unlocked the door.

The two of them had parted ever so slightly reluctantly, but it was mostly fine since Jonghyun left Minhyun’s apartment that day with not only his number, but also a spoken promise that they would meet up again soon and talk some more.

Despite having only met Minhyun three times, and two of those time were very brief, Jonghyun could already feel his affection for the taller man grow to the point where any mention of him made his heart flutter and his cheeks go warm. It wasn’t good for his health, not at all. Nothing about Minhyun was good for his health – not his handsome features, his cute and captivating eyesmiles, and definitely not his lips which Jonghyun found his eyes constantly drawn to.

He was just lucky that Minhyun’s own staring wasn’t nearly as subtle as the other probably thought it was, and the thought that Minhyun could be on the same page as he was about their feelings sent his heart thumping madly in his chest.

But alas, it was still early days. Only more time could tell where things would lead.

* * *

 

The fourth time that Jonghyun visited Minhyun’s apartment, and his room again, was a few weeks later.

The two of them hadn’t met up in Minhyun’s apartment since that day that Jonghyun was locked out. They had met up with each other, but it had usually been around campus having lunch together between lectures, or in the library where they met up to study together. They didn’t study the same subjects – Jonghyun studying maths and Minhyun studying literature – but they appreciated each other’s company nonetheless.

The library happened to be particularly full that day and so resigned to their fate of not being able to secure seats, they decided to instead just study in Minhyun’s room instead – neither of them needed much space or to take out any books so it was fine, and Jonghyun’s room was out of the question since the one time Minhyun had been in there, he could hardly concentrate on anything other than the apparent mess that was everywhere. A mess that Jonghyun himself could not see, in his opinion, his room wasn’t that bad. Maybe a little bit chaotic to the untrained eye, but to him, it was organised chaos if anything.

The two of them settled into an easy silence as they worked diligently. Jonghyun had claimed Minhyun’s desk since he needed to complete his homework with pen and paper, and Minhyun had offered to just sit on his bed instead since he just needed to type away an essay on his laptop.

But after maybe an hour or so of staring blankly at the question in front of him, Jonghyun threw his pen down and sighed. He had gotten through only 3 of the 10 problems he had to go over for his tutorial in 2 days’ time and the more he stared at the questions, the more he felt like he was getting nowhere with them fast.

Jonghyun’s sigh had prompted Minhyun to look up from his essay with concern marring his face.

“Everything alright?” he asked.

“Yeah…” Jonghyun sighed again, “it’s just some of the things in this module are _weird_.”

Minhyun continued to just look at Jonghyun, an unspoken sign that he was listening and that Jonghyun could keep going if he wanted.

“Like, you know that zero is less than one, right?”

Minhyun looked perplexed by his question.

“Erm, yes? Isn’t that obvious?”

“Exactly! It _is_ obvious.” Jonghyun exclaimed slightly frustratedly, “But apparently not obvious enough, because here I am sitting here being asked to prove that it’s true.”

“Your entire subject of study confuses me.” Minhyun stated plainly, making Jonghyun snort.

“Yeah, it confuses me too sometimes.” Jonghyun grumbled. “Like did you know, there are just as many even numbers as there are whole numbers – like positive and negative whole numbers?”

“Wait, what?” Minhyun screwed up his face in concentration, trying to get his head around what Jonghyun just said.

“Doesn’t seem to make sense, right? But it’s true. It’s all about bijective functions and so if you can find a bijection betwe—I’m boring you, aren’t I?” Jonghyun cut off abruptly. He was very aware that maths was not something most people found just as interesting and exciting as he did.

“Oh, not at all.” Minhyun assured him, “if you want to talk maths, that’s fine. You find it interesting and you should be able to talk about anything that interests you.”

“But—” Jonghyun began to protest.

“I think you’re forgetting the time you let me go on for about half an hour about how frustratingly dumb Othello is as a character. It’s only right that I give you the same sort of courtesy.” Minhyun reasoned.

“Well, if you say so…” Jonghyun acquiesced.

They descended back into comfortable silence for a moment, but neither of them continued to work. It wasn’t long before Minhyun closed the lid of his laptop and set it aside on his bedside table.

“I guess neither of us are about to get much more studying done then.” Jonghyun noted as he watched Minhyun continue to stretch out his limbs that had locked up from sitting in the same position for too long.

“We tried. Maybe not very hard, but we tried.”

Spying the empty spot next to Minhyun, Jonghyun got up and sat himself down beside him, reminiscent of the way they sat the first time Jonghyun was in Minhyun’s room.

“Speak for yourself, I’ve been thinking so hard, my mind is fried.”

Instead of a verbal response, Minhyun reached over with his hand to give a few comforting pats to Jonghyun’s knee. Jonghyun expected him to just give a few pats before removing his hand, but instead, Minhyun just… left it there on his knee. It wasn’t the most intimate of touches, but the touch still burned through Jonghyun’s jeans. It wasn’t where Minhyun’s hand was that made the touch feel intimate, it was just the fact that it was there and seemingly unlikely to go away any time soon.

Minhyun was a naturally clingy person, and while it had taken some time for Jonghyun to get used to, having Minhyun be a bit touchy with him wasn’t particularly unusual, but rarely did those touches linger so much.

Jonghyun stared at the hand on his knee that Minhyun still hadn’t retracted before his gaze followed Minhyun’s arm up past his shoulders to his face. Minhyun was looking at him hesitantly, as if afraid of what Jonghyun might say. The look of hesitation with a hint of hope made Jonghyun think of all the times he had caught Minhyun staring at him with an almost unreadable expression in the past few weeks. It reminded him of all the times when Jonghyun had brushed against Minhyun and the latter had turned away with a red tinge at the tips of his ears.

Jonghyun wasn’t the best at reading people, but there were some things that even he couldn’t miss.

The two of them had been skirting around each other, slowly testing out the boundaries between their friendship and something more for the past couple of weeks and they both knew it. It was just that neither of them, until now, seemed to want to do anything more about it.

“Minhyun…” Jonghyun began even though he didn’t quite know where his sentence was going just yet. It didn’t seem to matter though since Minhyun apparently had some idea of what he wanted to say.

“We’ve both been edging around this, haven’t we?” Minhyun began. “I think we both know that we’ve been toeing this line in our friendship for almost as long as we’ve been friends, don’t we?”

Jonghyun nodded. Trust Minhyun to be able to vocalise exactly what Jonghyun was also thinking.

“Then…” Minhyun hesitated, “shall we talk about it now?”

Jonghyun didn’t know why the thought of talking about their feelings made him so nervous. From the way that the past few weeks had gone, and judging from the way that Minhyun was talking, it was unlikely that Jonghyun would spill his feelings only to be met with bitter rejection. But Minhyun was right, it was about time they actually talked to each other and laid things out plainly so that they could move forward.

“I like you.” Jonghyun confessed softly. “Quite a lot actually.” He admitted, and it took a lot of effort to hold Minhyun’s gaze and to not look away abashedly.

Minhyun’s lips began to curl upwards; his smile getting wider and wider until it was threatening to take over his entire face. His eyes glistened with undisguised mirth as he continued to just stare at Jonghyun.

Tentatively, Minhyun began to lean forward, even closer into Jonghyun’s space. Minhyun moved so slowly that Jonghyun barely registered his movement, but it was clear that Minhyun was giving him a chance to duck out of his advances if he wanted. As if he ever would though.

“C-can I kiss you?” Minhyun whispered softly. He was already close enough to Jonghyun that he could see the all the ligaments in Minhyun’s irises responsible for his pupils begin blown wide open.

“Aren’t you going to say it back first?” Jonghyun questioned with a slight tilt of his head that made their noses bump together.

Minhyun continued to lean and then tilt his head before just stopping short. They were but a hair’s breadth away from kissing and Jonghyun wondered how Minhyun seemed to have the self-control to be able to stop when all he himself wanted to do was just close the distance between them already.

“I like you too.” Minhyun whispered, making their lips brush minutely as he spoke.

Jonghyun didn’t waste another second before he finally pressed their lips together. Minhyun’s lips were soft against his own, if a little chapped from all the times that he habitually ran his tongue over his lips. But soft or not; rough and chapped, or smooth; it didn’t matter because it just felt right.

Just their simple kiss, the short press of their lips together, was enough to make Jonghyun feel warm all over and tingling from his head to his toes. It should have scared him that one person could make him feel so much but for some reason, when it came to Hwang Minhyun, his concerns just melted away.

When they finally drew back from each other, there was a flush riding high on Minhyun’s cheeks and reaching all the way to the tips of his ears. Jonghyun watched as Minhyun bit back a smile, literally having to bit down on his bottom lips to keep himself from breaking into a splitting grin.

Jonghyun himself showed no such restraint, letting his smile fully take over his features for Minhyun to see.

“What to do with you, Jonghyun-ah…” Minhyun mused quietly, as if to himself.

Jonghyun tilted his head in confusion, screwing up his face in thought at the same moment.

“What can I do when you’re so cute?” Minhyun elaborated, effectively making Jonghyun blush.

“Well…” Jonghyun began bashfully, “you could kiss me again…?” he suggested slyly, making Minhyun chuckle lightly.

“I suppose I can manage that.” Minhyun humoured him, before he leant back in for another kiss.

Jonghyun relished in the feeling of Minhyun’s smile against his own, letting himself melt deeper and closer into Minhyun’s embrace.

Minhyun slid his hands up Jonghyun’s back to cup his face as he deepened their kiss. At the same time, Jonghyun fisted his hands into the front of Minhyun’s jumper, clutching at the soft material as if it was a lifeline.

“I’m glad you walked into my kitchen that day we met.” Minhyun said after they broke the kiss.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad we met,” Jonghyun began, “I just wish I didn’t get the short end of the stick in the run up to our meeting.” He could have done without walking up all those damn stairs thank you very much.

“But it was destiny, Jonghyun-ah.” Minhyun replied by way of explanation. “It was destiny for you to end up in the wrong place like that.”

“Not the wrong place anymore though.” Jonghyun remarked vaguely.

“Oh?”

“Now, this is right where I want to be.”

The utter embarrassment of saying such a cringy statement was worth it when Minhyun’s eyes crinkled at the corners and turned into crescents as he laughed and buried his head into Jonghyun’s shoulder as his body continued to shake with laughter.

_‘Yeah, this is definitely where I want to be.’_

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading :))) 
> 
> I'm praying for more 2hyun contents in 2019 so I can continue to gain inspiration for writing, and hoping I'll have time for it... I have a number of things I want to write but time... where is it TAT 
> 
> Let me know what you think in the comments or cc or wherever heh
> 
> Find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/nightberrypearl) or   
> [Curious Cat](https://curiouscat.me/nightberrypearl)


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